Spoonful of Sugar Free

Registered Dietitian

Food

Liquid Gold

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Hey all! I’ve been hearing a lot about juicing these days, so my mom and I finally made one the other day.

Dr. Ben Kim, a chiropractor and acupuncturist living and working in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, just sent out a newsletter last week addressing this. If you haven’t already heard of Dr. Ben Kim, I highly recommend checking out his website (click on his name above for the link) because he has a TON of great information to share!

Anyway, here’s the link to his Juice post:

How to Cleanse and Nourish Your Cells with Freshly Pressed Vegetable Juices

I also saw a video on orange juice yesterday. It talks about how “Two-thirds of households buy orange juice in the U.S. and most don’t know that “fresh” juice that is not made from concentrate loses its flavor when stored and shipped in giant tanks. Juice companies then put flavor packs in the stored juice. These flavor packs have been engineered by flavor and perfume companies. It is not so much that this is bad for your health (I’m not sure if it is or not), the big issue is that you don’t really know what you are buying and you have a right to know. Your “fresh” orange juice is processed and flavored.”

Here it is if your interested:

So after all this talk about juice, I made my own:

Contents: cucumber, carrot, lemon, apple, tomatoes

My mom likes to call it “liquid gold” because it tastes sooooo good, and it is sooooo good for you!

I use Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer Deluxe. It works really well. The only reason why we chose this was because we knew Jack sold really good juicers, and Costco sold the Deluxe version for a discount!

Thought-provoking, mind-prodding question of the day:

Do you guys Juice? What are your favorite ingredients to put in your juices?

If you do juice, How does juicing make you feel, and why do you choose to juice?

I know I love juicing because it tastes good, I can feel my body feasting on the vitamins of the juice, and I feel energetic, too!

Lights! Camera! Action!

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Wouldn’t life be so interesting if it were a t.v. show? Or a action movie? A chick-flick drama? Or a horror film?

How about a culinary masterpiece for every meal? Something that looks like it came right out of the magazine?

Well, that’s what I felt like for lunch today. I felt like creating a beautiful dish of that I could eat as a meal. But this was, of course, going to be healthy. This is what I came up with:

This beautiful plate uses black olives, crunchmaster crackers, spinach leaves, grape tomatoes, capers, roasted red peppers, hummus, purple onion, and avocado. I made mini spinach wraps, crackers with toppings, and layered veggies to create this.

What do you think?

It took me about thirty minutes to make, and about 15 minutes to eat……

Thought-provoking, mind-prodding question of the day:

If you could live in a movie, which one would it be? Action, horror, drama, romance?

I would want to live in The Sound of Music, I think. They live in such a beautiful country, and they are always singing! I like that.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

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Hey! Sorry guys I haven’t updated for a week. I’ve been really busy moving this past week, and I haven’t even had a chance to sit down at the computer!

Anyway, the family who sold us their house was extremely nice, generous, and helpful! They knew I loved to cook, so they left some goodies in the kitchen that they didn’t want/need anymore. One of the goodies included a panini maker! It looked like it had never been used before because it was extremely clean, and it still had the sticker on it.

I had been on a pb&j kick the last week or so, so I wanted to see what it would taste like panini style. The result: a warm and toasty thin bread with warm peanut butter enveloped with jelly oozing out the sides. Yeah, it was that good.

PB&J Panini

~This sandwich is a mix of 2 childhood favorites: peanut butter and jelly and grilled cheese.

  • 2 slices bread of choice (I used Nature’s Own Whole Wheat)
  • 2 Tablespoons Peanut Butter (I used Kirkland’s organic signature)
  • 1 Tablespoon all-fruit jelly or sliced bananas

Make a pb and j (or pb and b) like you normally would, and throw it in the panini press for a minute or so. Enjoy!

Here’s a pic from our new house below. My sister and I saw this strange bird walking across our lawn, and had to take a picture. Sorry about the screened in porch in the way. I didn’t want to get too close and scare it away.

Thought-provoking, mind-prodding question of the day:

What is the strangest thing that you saw walking through your yard?

I know I’ve seen a few. One time a saw the fattest squirrel eating an acorn on my backyard slide.